Agency
Uganda’s flagship poverty eradication programme, the Parish Development Model (PDM), is struggling with deep structural and governance failures despite absorbing trillions of Shillings in public funds, Auditor General Edward Akol has revealed.
In his December audit report to Parliament, Akol notes that although the government has invested 3.38 trillion Shillings in PDM since its launch in the 2021/22 financial year, large sums remain idle, have been diverted, or failed to reach intended beneficiaries.
While the government released 3.26 trillion Shillings to more than 10,500 PDM Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations (SACCOs) nationwide, only 2.75 trillion Shillings (84 per cent) had reached households by June 2025.
About 508.6 billion Shillings remained undistributed, while 106 million Shillings withdrawn by 62 SACCOs could not be accounted for. Akol warns that this trend undermines the programme’s core objective of transitioning subsistence households into the money economy and frustrates the Financial Inclusion pillar, which seeks to commercialise agriculture and eradicate poverty.
The audit uncovered widespread abuse at the household level, including 619 beneficiaries implementing ineligible projects, 109 ghost projects, and 263 million Shillings diverted across 52 local governments. Even more concerning, 2,336 households received PDM loans multiple times in clear violation of programme guidelines.
Despite the expiry of the grace period for the first cohort of beneficiaries, recovery of the Parish Revolving Fund has barely begun. Only 18,105 beneficiaries in 30 districts had started voluntary repayments, yielding just 9.34 billion Shillings, a fraction of the outstanding funds.
Akol attributes the weak recovery to loans processed outside the Parish Development Management Information System (PDMIS) and poor communication of recovery timelines to SACCO boards. The report adds that preparedness for recovery was inadequate, exposing the programme to sustainability risks.
